The Economist: “The Fed's have-it-both-ways policy”

R.A., regarding Bernanke’s Jackson Hole speech, your column notes that you “found the tone on monetary policy to be confusing and timid.” Expectations now turn to what President Obama will say next week and what the Fed will do (or not do) when they next meet. Uncertainty again prevails.

Alexander Mirtchev

South Africa Into BRICs: Shifting Global Economic Balance Away From Developed Countries? – Analysis

In January Chinese President Hu Jintao formally invited South African President Jacob Zuma to attend the third BRIC leaders’ summit to be held in China in mid April 2011, thus taking the number of BRIC nation to five (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). South Africa had applied and lobbied to join the BRIC at the G20 meeting of the world’s leading economies in Seoul in November 2010. The acronym, BRIC was coined by Jim O’Neill an economist with the Goldman Sachs in a paper entitled “The World Needs Better Economic BRICs” published in 2001. Yet in another paper Dominic et. al. (2003), again from Goldman Sachs argue that over the next 50 years, the BRICs could become a much larger force in the world economy and could be larger than the G6 in US dollar terms.